How to Ditch Summer School

If you're like most students, one of the first thoughts that pops into your head when you learn you have to go to summer school runs along the lings of how to ditch the class and take advantage of the summer sun. While your academic performance may suffer when you ditch summer school, remember: you're only young once.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Valid excuse
• Document signed by parents

1. Make a plan. The first thing you'll want to do is avoid having your parents find out that you're going to ditch summer school. If they're still home when you normally leave for class, make sure you get out of the house at the same time that you normally would if you were going to go to class.

2. Stay as far away from the campus as possible. Your plan to ditch summer school will hit a wall really fast if your teacher spots you loafing around the parking lot minutes before class is supposed to start. Your absence will be even more conspicuous if your teacher or another administrator saw you on campus on a day during which you failed to turn up for class.

3. Learn as much as you can about your school's attendance policy, and how absences are handled. For example, you'll want to know whether the school will contact your parents if you miss a class without a valid excuse, or if you'll only be required to serve a detention or a similar punishment. In the latter case, you'll have to weigh the pros and cons before you commit either way.

4. Have your excuse prepared. If you know, for example, that your parents will be contacted if you fail to turn up in class, make sure that you've spent the time coming up with a valid excuse that holds up to scrutiny. In other words, you'll have a hard time selling a story that you were sick if your mom heard loud music coming from your room when you woke up in the morning.

5. Fake a note. While nobody wants to endorse forging doctor's notes, a lot of kids have gotten away with submitting a note of "excused absence" on behalf of their parents--without their parents' knowledge. One trick that's worked: find a document in your house that your parents have signed. Type and print a note using your computer, and then hold the signed document up to a window and trace their signatures onto your fabricated note. You can hand it in the next time you show up for class.

6. Take your chances. Attendance policies are designed to discourage skipping classes, and students who are under the age of 18 (and therefore ineligible to write their own notes) usually have to pay the piper in the end for cutting class.

Tips & Warnings

• Fridays are the best days to ditch high school summer classes. It's relatively rare for lax attendance to slip through the administrative cracks during the week. Remember, teachers are people too: they live for the weekend as much as anyone else does.